There is an old story, much loved and often repeated. It is about a Stockbridge woman who walked to her friend’s house one morning and rapped on the door. When she started out, she was in fine spirits. By the time she arrived, she was upset.
“My dear, what is the matter?” her friend asked.
Grabbing hold of her friend’s arm to brace herself against a tilting planet, she said, “I just saw a person walking on Main Street that I did not know!”
True or apocryphal, those days are gone. Most of our country lives very far away from places where everyone recognizes everyone else on the street. Some do not recognize the neighbor next door or down the apartment hallway. We walk among strangers daily and cannot imagine what that Stockbridge woman was upset about so long ago.
The more things change
And yet, no matter how much externals change, our inner desires remain the same. No matter how much our population grows and changes, we humans still want a community. No matter how much community seems to be dissolving as we reach for it, our wishes for acceptance and belonging remain.
So how do we get community back? If we can, how do we maintain it? What is the definition of community and what are elements?
The definition of community is a group of people who live in the same place with some commonality, perhaps ethnic, perhaps cultural. OK, surely, we mean more than that.
Moving from definition to elements of the definition, how about a group of people living in the same place with shared attitudes, interests, goals, and sharing a feeling of fellowship? Dig deeper and find that community has elements of shared history, shared habits, rituals, and norms. Together they shape communal identity. Protect and defend the elements and community is built. Community rewards the members with a strong sense of identity, safety, and trust. In turn, trust is the cornerstone of sound problem solving. Here is the thing we have forgotten to talk about recently. Community is an underpinning of happiness.
OK, better, but in “Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?,” Frankie asks her father about a local family. He doesn’t just know the current members, he knows their parents, grandparents, and third cousins once removed. He explains that post-World War I, that characteristic of the English village was dying out. It was 1934. He mourned the fact because that is how “you knew where you were.”
So, where exactly are we?
We are told our country is divided. Factions do not trust one another. We only organize with those like us and eschew “the other.” We live in intellectual silos where only opinions expressed reinforce the ones we already hold. Is there no way to get there from Here?
Physical elements of community
We need the town square, a gathering place to meet and discuss. What we have are social platforms on the internet. Well, OK, but it gets us only halfway there. We need to get out of the house and away from seeing each other as images on screens. We need to talk face to face. Zoom needs to be a second choice to being there.
We need something that guides conversation, so we are all discussing the same thing. That thing needs to be curated—selected, organized, and presented using professional or expert knowledge. It needs to be excluded if untrue, PR not information, or ad hominem attacks.
We need a place to socialize and get to know one another. Yup, face to face.
So, of those pieces, what do we have? In Stockbridge, where we have no home delivery of mail, one gathering place is the post office. We have local bars. If we focus, we can find more. I am proud to say for many years we had my house, and as long as I am here, we always will—afternoon tea and an evening with wine, cheese, and conversation.
We have newspapers. We are lucky to have a plethora of hyperlocal newspapers: The Otis Observer, The Sandisfield Times, Stockbridge Updates, and many more—close to one in each of the 18 towns in the 3rd Berkshire District.
Informed electorate
It was a January afternoon in 2020. There were about a dozen people sitting around my living room. I was trying to sketch out the reasons to create a Stockbridge newspaper. There were two: a strong community and an informed electorate.
By 2020, I had attended 40 town meetings, maybe more. One thing never changed: Folks walked in, picked up a copy of the Warrant. May were hearing about an issue for the first time just minutes before they were asked to vote. A local, very local newspaper could inform the townsfolk about the issues long before town meeting, and now.
Then and now
The second-ever newspaper in Berkshire County was the Western Star, published in Stockbridge in 1794. Stockbridge Updates does not face two problems that early newspapers did. The Reverend Orville Dewey wrote about “an abominable smell caused by something in the manufacture.” Although a sober and religious man, Dewey wrote, “Gentlemen, it is a stink.”
Another reader complained about the ink coming off on his fingers as he turned the pages. Whatever else Stockbridge Updates may face going forward, a digital newspaper avoids both those old-time inconveniences, and now we are six.
Stockbridge Updates has grown, hopefully, because we give the public what it wants. They want to know what’s going on and what our elected, appointed, and paid officials are up to. They want a place to voice opinions and concerns. They want to see a nice-looking issue. Thanks to talented photographers and the beauty of our village, Stockbridge Updates is lookin’ good.
The first issue appeared in August 2020, eight months after that January meeting, and now we are six. You want to start one in your town? Call me. We need hyperlocal news now more than ever because it builds community—now is the time.
Get out of the house; don’t Zoom and email. Call; don’t text. Reach out. No worries, for once, we all want the same thing: to build community and belong.